Originally Posted by
bsagator
As a publicly traded company, is Delta required to show that their Diamond medallion members "almost doubled"? I find it very hard to believe that US based customers moved up to Diamond from Platinum during the pandemic. Platinum doubling, for sure with rollover. But I wouldn't be surprised to see that the vast majority of new Diamonds during the pandemic were from overseas customers. I don't know anyone that increased their flying during the pandemic to move up to a Diamond.
2021- I organically re-qualified for DM by July 2021, when Ed granted status extensions to the folks WFH, I knew the current predicament we find ourselves in with doubling of Diamond members was inevitable, so I did a UA MileagePlus 1K status match and cleared that within 2 months by purchasing F fares, then Hyatt as a Globalist had a AA Platinum Pro challenge and I cleared that also with F fare purchases. I have the flighty app and my 2021 flight stats was 133 segments with 10 long haul international segments. I played the field with UA and AA part of 2022, while maintaining DL DM status, and sticking around with DM by re-qualifying based on MQD's. I actually increased my flying during the pandemic, as airlines and hotels were desperate for travelers. 2020 was very unique flying as ATL was a ghost town and a majority of my connections was always in the B terminal. The B SkyClub was a quarter filled and all the food was pre-package.
I'm sure the ranks of Platinums probably quadrupled with the $25kMQM waiver and $30,000 status boost for MQM's-- this has been affecting domestic upgrades with the PM Choice Benefit RUC's as I noticed a lot of same last names high on the upgrade list, meaning that couples are traveling together using a RUC.